NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) -- Mayor Eric Adams ordered flags at half-staff Monday as the city marked the one-year anniversary of the Bronx high-rise fire that killed 17 people, including eight children.
The mayor said all flags on city buildings, as well as stationary flagstaffs throughout the five boroughs, should be lowered to half-staff as a mark of respect for the 17 victims in the Jan. 9, 2022, fire at Twin Parks North West on E. 181st Street in Tremont.
“One year ago, a devastating fire took the lives of 17 people in the Bronx at the Twin Parks apartment complex,” Adams said in a statement. “On that day, our city lost 17 of our neighbors and friends — they were our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our children and spouses.”
“Since that day, our city has passed critical legislation to educate and protect New Yorkers from fires to help prevent another tragedy,” the mayor continued. “Today, we honor and remember the lives lost.”
The mayor tweeted a video that memorializes the 17 people who died, including five members of one family.
Investigators determined that an electric space heater sparked the fire in a second- and third-floor duplex apartment at Twin Parks North West.
While the fire was mostly contained to the immediate area of the apartment, two doors that were supposed to close automatically were not working, allowing for an enormous volume of smoke to escape the apartment and fill every floor of the 19-story building, trapping residents who were trying to flee in halls and stairwells.
In addition to the deaths, which were all caused by smoke inhalation, more than 40 people were injured, many of them suffering from severe smoke inhalation, officials said.
The fire was the deadliest in New York City since an arson at the Happy Land nightclub on Southern Boulevard in West Farms killed 87 people in 1990.
Bronx City Council Member Oswald Feliz told 1010 WINS on Monday that safety changes for self-closing doors have been made in the wake of the Twin Parks fire.
“We passed legislation strengthening enforcement of self-closing door laws to make sure that self-closing doors are truly self-closing,” Feliz said. “So now if there is a self-closing door violation, landlords are given no more than 14 days to fix the violation.”
In December, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation into law that requires electric space heaters in the state to have thermostats and automatic shut-offs. It also requires that the heaters be certified by a testing and certification body recognized and approved by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In addition to flags being lowered, a number of events were planned for Monday to mark the Twin Parks anniversary, including a morning vigil attended by the mayor and a street renaming outside the high-rise, where some displaced residents returned in the months after the fire.
The street outside the building will be renamed 17 Abdoulie Touray Way in honor of the victims, who were all immigrants or descendants of immigrants from West Africa. Abdoulie Touray is believed to be the first Gambian to have moved into the building in the 1970s. The 17 represents the 17 lives lost.
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